midpointsaloon | Another Day, Another Dollar (post-round mingle)

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Another Day, Another Dollar (post-round mingle)

PLAYERS: Everyone!
LOCATION: Midpoint, and anywhere else people want to explore
GOAL: Time to relax after some hard-won rounds.
WARNINGS: None
OTHER: The setting post for those who want to explore

The stagecoach reaches the Ranch... and the cargo isn’t with it. A large, feathery dinosaur reaches the Ranch a little later, with only some of their cargo, having been hit mid-route and between transformations by the bandits.

“Well, we’ll take what we can get,” Lee says sourly at what’s left after the bandits’ raiding - maybe half of the empty crates. He hollers at his ranch hands, “Come get 'em, boys!” Between him and the other workers, and any of the remaining driver team able to be pressed into service (which is mostly just Groot), the crates are unloaded and stacked and filled with supplies for the next train out. Looks like they were useful, after all.

At the end of the day, Lee sends the drivers on their way back to Midpoint, and the bandits can do what they will with their portion of the cargo. Got any use for sturdy wooden crates, friends?

In Tycoon Depot, Tiffany Jamesson has spent a(n enjoyable) day and a half in hiding with Inara, Daylight, and Irene, peppering Daylight with questions and flirting demurely with Inara and Irene, presumably out of boredom. The hand-off with her father goes pretty smoothly, with only Fuwa on the outside - he might be furious, but he's not willing to interrupt and risk the target’s life in a firefight.

Exchange made, kidnappers and bodyguards are free to head back to Midpoint.

In the saloon, North has laid out a buffet of everyone’s favorite foods to choose from, with beer and wine on the house for two days only: the traditional post-round congratulations-or-consolations feast. There’s someone on the piano almost all night providing music, and extra hot water for baths whenever people finally retires to their rooms. Most Players make good use of the additional free food and drink for as long as it lasts; whether for enjoyment, self-medication, or to stave off boredom is their own call.

The dead don't remain so for long, and wake up in jail cells - the same ones they started their round at - at the edges of the game arena around the same time as the round ends, ready to be collected by friends - if there’s anyone who wants to come get them.

The next week and a half belong to the Players to do with what they please, be it sleep all day, spend their hard-earned points on more alcohol, ask lots of questions, or explore the arena. There are no events planned, nothing to steal, no one to murder (unless you really want to, anyway), and plenty of things to learn about and try to get to the bottom of, for any Players not too jaded to try and search. Good luck with that, anyway.

Oh - did you want to know if you won, or how badly you lost? Gonna have to ask North or Booker for your points totals, because there’s nobody who actually announces whether you won or lost...

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Hajime's own expression is also a little hard to read--he didn't know what hit him and really had only others' accounts to go off of. Ryo's expression, however, is very easy to read. At Soldat's appearance, he immediately springs into a mantis threat display (that would probably be more effective if his wings weren't a pastel heart pattern and he weren't a foot tall) and starts trying to get in between Bucky and Hajime. "What do you want?!"

That Ryo is getting angry and protective is really a strange and unusual new thing, and Hajime can only stare down at his Spirit Companion in surprise. (At least it gives him a chance to think on how the hell to handle this?)

It is, unfortunately for Ryo, the cutest threat display ever, and since Soldat doesn't actually know anything about mantises, it takes his words to make them even understand it is supposed to be threatening. The moment of perplexed bemusement slips into something flat and neutral, and they look down at the tabletop.

"To give Hajime a beer. And apologize. I don't hurt people outside missions."

"Wasn't just hurting! Was killing!" Ryo is so far out of his depth here; he is upset and still hopping around a bit in his adorable little threat display. "Why beer? Makes more fighty!" He pauses. "Or more smoochy if Second Daddy is here! But he isn't! So fighty!" Gosh, hooking Hajime up with a drink is just a terrible idea and clearly more evidence of Soldat's clear treachery.

Hajime's in the unfamiliar position of having to calm the little mantis down. "Ryo, it's. It's just a thing you do in a situation like this." (Odd, that he's taking it better, considering how that had played out.) He's just going to pick Ryo off the table now. "It was a bad situation."

This is the most awkward situation. Soldat has no idea what to do. Beer is just standard, for situations like this. For a guy at a table in a saloon where you need to apologize but aren't very good at it. Isn't it? "It's going to happen again. Maybe not by me. But by somebody. A round where only one person on each team dies is. Pretty good, actually. Usually it's more. I've died. So many times, now."

It is so awkward. So very awkward. "People could die and get better the last place we were at, too." That seems more meant to placate Ryo than to explain anything to Soldat. "Doesn't make it any easier to deal with. For anyone."

Ryo's trying to scramble back onto the table now. "But why do what they want? Why not just refuse to fight?"

Soldat hesitates, but in the end answers. They need to know. It may not help them understand Soldat, but it's not like they deserve forgiveness anyway. They'd just rather not have made new enemies-for-life like Fuwa. "There's punishment. I didn't do my first two assigned missions. Years ago. It was. Pretty awful."

Hajime's still keeping his hands busy trying to settle Ryo down, because there's a lot of mantis scrambling and attempting to threat posture again. "How awful?" His tone's grim. "Because if the alternative is killing or being killed..." Not for the first time, he wishes he didn't have Ryo to worry about here. That's such a weak spot...makes him stronger in some ways, but oh, he doesn't want to see the little guy get hurt.

It's really hard to explain, particularly when words are not one's strong point. Soldat takes a minute to try and organize the impressions into something that might make a little bit of sense. "There's pain, confusion, emptiness. There's light and shadow but nothing you can actually see. Can't move. Can't talk. Can't do anything but feel. Can't tell how much time is passing or what's going on around you. Can't even pass out. Sometimes there's voices, but can't understand them. Almost everyone who's been here longer than a few rounds has experienced it. Nobody wants to go do it again. I've been three times."

"Even if you're playing their game, they'll still drag you in there?" Hajime grimaces.

Ryo's still agitated, still not settling down, but he has, instead of aggressively posturing at Soldat, decided to climb atop Hajime's head so he can look stern and foreboding from up there. (At least, he thinks he does. He absolutely can't pull that off, and it's not like Hajime's tall enough to help that.)

"If you stop playing their game. That's when. So I had to take one of your team out, to keep playing. And you made the most tactical sense." They shrug helplessly. "It wasn't personal. I expect anyone to take a shot like that at me, if they can. Most of the other players will. And have."

"I helped kill one of the beings who was making us play our last game," Hajime says flatly. "Maybe it could happen here, too." Granted, he remembers almost none of that fight because he'd been whipped into such a berserker frenzy so easily. Details, details.

"Shot Hajime because he was the strongest and biggest threat?" Ryo asks. It makes things slightly more understandable. Slightly. He is still a distinctly unhappy mantis.

"If we can find a way to stop them. I'll be there to headshot whoever's behind this shit-show. Absolutely."

Their grim expression twitches back out into something like surprise at Ryo's addition. "Uh. Yes." Which is not actually true, mostly he was just the unknown variable, and the most unexpected, and the one without a grudge that would keep him solely focused on beating Soldat into paste for a while. And while Soldat is not great at lying, in this case, they don't have to be: they're pretty sure Ryo is not going to be able to tell that's actually a lie.

"Sounds like a plan, then." Granted, they need more of a plan than just "violently end this," but it's good to have goals.

"And no...lasting harm done," Hajime allows. Damn, but those dead infiltrations had helped. Gave him practice at pretending everything was fine for Ryo, if nothing else. It seems to be working. Ryo's stopped the threat displays, at least.

That went better than it could have, at least. Soldat has been used to the idea of dying (and coming back) for a very long time, but they know not everyone thinks that way. Very few people feel that way, really.

So they nod. And then feel awkward. What does one do now? "Do you want the beer? And the mochi?"

Really, if it hadn't been for Hajime's infiltrations dying a few times in Synodiporia, this conversation wouldn't be anywhere near as civil.

And hey! They can both be hideously awkward! Hajime looks down at the beer and mochi like he's only just realized it's there. "Uh, sure. Thanks."

Ryo looks very disapprovingly at the beer. "Better not go pick fights after that."

"He does, he gets thrown out by North," Soldat says. "And it's only one. It'll probably be fine." Unless Hajime is some kind of extreme lightweight when it comes to alcohol. The green blood definitely suggested "not human" of some stripe, which... could mean intolerance to alcohol, they suppose.

"Ryo," Hajime says with a sigh, "the time you're thinking of, that stuff was a lot stronger, and I had much more of it." Sure, his tolerance isn't the greatest, but he's not that much of a lightweight.

Ryo still looks very much like he is judging the both of them, really.

"Don't look at me," Soldat says, directly to Ryo, for that look. "I can't get drunk. Not without trying really, really hard. Pretty sure one beer ain't gonna do it, though."

"I didn't think I could get drunk, either." Hajime shrugs. "But the last place we were at...let's just say I found the strongest alcohol I could possibly imagine. It did the trick more than Ryo would have liked."

Also he can absolutely get drunk off of normal alcohol and doesn't have the greatest tolerance, but an Undead ego is a hell of a thing.

"Metabolism. It's a thing they did to me, back in my own world. Burn through it too fast," Soldat explains. "Did find one thing that could do it, but I don't have that here. And haven't wanted to ask North." They're half-sure North would disapprove, and honestly, while getting absolutely off-their-ass drunk hasn't sounded all that good when living in what amounted to a hostile environment for years. Even at their lowest, it still hadn't been safe enough to lose that kind of control.

Hajime grimaces at the 'thing they did to me' but doesn't pry. He's seen enough shit--had infiltrations go through enough shit--to know better. "Fair enough. I've only done it the one time...it's not really worth it." In the moment, sure, but the headache the morning after, that hadn't.

Yeah, you probably don't want to hear Soldat's life story, Hajime. Not fun conversation, that. "Only in extreme circumstances. When there's something that really needs forgetting for a while. That's not now. I mostly don't bother with the alcohol here. It costs, you know. And I have to buy extra food as it is."

"Ah, you've got to be careful if you're drinking to forget." Hajime raises his glass in a mock toast. "Once you start, you can't stop, and then you end up with a little mantis calling you out on that one time for all eternity."

"For good reason," Ryo insists.

"I believe you," Soldat tells them both gravely, and holds up his own beer (having gotten two, just in case, this time) in solidarity. "Not going to be a problem now, anyway. You'll be okay here, I think." Ryo might not, but Hajime might. If he's already this comfortable with death, he'll do fine. "But if you find some way out, I've got your back for that."

Look, Hajime will do what he has to do in order to make sure Ryo isn't too badly upset--and he's good at hiding his emotions.

He gives Soldat a nod. "Good. I'll take you up on that." Teamwork may not be his favorite thing, but he's learned its value.

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Another Day, Another Dollar (post-round mingle)

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